old instrument it seemed to Phoebe as if she were
echoing the harmony of the eternal music of all creation. Child though
she was, she sang with the joy and sincerity of the true musician. She
merely smiled when Aunt Maria characterized her best efforts as
"doodling" and rejoiced when her father, Mother Bab or David praised her
singing.

In school she progressed rapidly but her interest lagged when, after
two years of teaching, Miss Lee resigned her position as teacher of the
school on the hill and a new teacher took command. The entire school
missed the teacher from Philadelphia, but Phoebe was almost
inconsolable. She, especially, appreciated the gain of contact with the
teacher she loved and she continued to profit by the remembrance of many
things Miss Lee had taught her. The Memory Gems, alone, bore evidence of
the change the teacher from the city had wrought in the rural school.
Phoebe smiled as she thought how the poems had been sing-songed until
Miss Lee taught the children to bring out the meaning of the words.

"Oh, my," she laughed one day as she and David were speaking of school
happenings, "do you remember how John Schneider used to say Memory Gems?
The day he got up and said, 'Have-you-heard-the-waters-singing-little-May
--where-the-willows-green-are-bending-over-the-way--do-you-know-how-low-
and-sweet-are-the-words-the-waves-repeat--to-the-pebbles-at-their-feet--
night-and-day?'"

David laughed at the girl's droll imitation, the way she sing-songed the
verse in the exact manner prevalent in many rural schools.

"And do you remember," he asked, "the day Isaac Hunchberger defined
bipeds?"

"Oh, yes! I'll never forget that! It was the day the County
Superintendent of Schools came to visit our school and Miss Lee was
anxious to have us show off. Isaac showed off, all right, with his
'Bipets are sings vis two lex!' I guess Miss Lee decided that day that
the Pennsylvania Dutch is ingrained in our English and hard to get out."

To Phoebe each Memory Gem of her school days became, in truth, a gem
stored away for future years. Long after she had outgrown the little
rural school scraps of poetry returned to her to rewaken the enthusiasm
of childhood and to teach her again to "hear the lark within the
songless egg and find the fountain where they wailed, 'Mirage!'"

Phoebe wanted so many things in those school-day years but she wanted
most of all to become like Miss Lee. So earnestly did she try to speak
as h